How five men have turned cruel fate into a killing at Phnom Penh’s genocide sites.

A group of pretty young backpackers comes rolling up in a tuk tuk, joking and laughing, at the gates of Tuol Sleng. They step out, grab wallets to pay their driver, and are swarmed by a misshapen and missing-limbed human mass. Laughter dies.

Burns and stumps are flaunted. The girls fork out money without looking into the beggars’ faces. This is not a display of compassion: they are paying to be left alone.

The beggars disperse, pocketing their riel. One, persistent, follows the girls into the museum. Leaning heavily on a crutch, he blocks the entrance to the ticket booth and waves his handless forearm. “More,” he hisses from the shadows of his tattered straw hat, “more!” The girls try to step around him. The beggar does not budge. An idle security guard watches the scene: this is nothing new. The girls eventually oblige – the beggar takes their money in his good right hand – before entering the museum to bear witness to misery of a very different kind.

In a country that offers little in terms of social security, turning to a life of begging is more often a matter of necessity than choice for individuals with physical disabilities. Even for the physically fit, a lack of capital, education, or skill training usually limits one’s career opportunities to low-paying service work or manual labour. When a jobseeker suffers from impaired vision, mobility, or disfiguring burns, one’s career prospects all but disappear. While several non-governmental organisations offer specialised vocational training for such individuals, access to their resources is by no means universal, and without financial support from their families, many disabled Cambodians are forced to provide for themselves by begging.

While the majority of Cambodia’s beggars live a destitute existence, a small group in Phnom Penh have learned to turn the exhibition of their suffering into a profitable enterprise. This is particularly the case for those currently begging at Phnom Penh’s genocide sites.

Between 1975 and 1979, nearly 20,000 people were held and tortured by the Khmer Rouge in S-21, a high school-turned-prison that is now home to the harrowing Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

Sok Thy, 56, has been begging in front of Tuol Sleng since 2006. In 1993, a bottle of acid accidentally fell on his face. With customers repulsed by his burns, he was forced to abandon his bicycle-selling business.

Sok Thy’s soft-spoken and friendly demeanour seems totally incongruous with the forceful way in which he practices his trade. Hiding his face under a baggy cap and krama, he lingers at the museum’s entrance.

When a tourist approaches, he pounces. In one swift movement, he flips off his cap and thrusts his face towards his target. “Money,” he whispers. “For family, for rice.”

Tourists start. Many give him a wide berth. Few look at his half-melted face; at the button of scar tissue where an ear used to be; at the translucent film of skin that covers his clouded right eye.

Sok Thy extends his cap. Money is dropped in. If a tourist refuses, or if Sok Thy deems their contribution insignificant, he will follow them to their tuk tuk demanding more. Sok Thy says that foreigners – especially Australians, the English, and Koreans – always give more than Cambodians.

The approximately $12.50 Sok Thy claims to make each day goes towards supporting his unemployed wife and five young children. The only outside assistance he receives is a $30 monthly stipend from the Cambodian Acid Survivors Charity (see boxed text) to help offset the cost of his children’s education.

While Sok Thy says that he would eventually like to repair bicycles or open a shop in his home, he also seems content to continue begging. “As long as I am alive, my family will move forward,” Sok Thy says. “When I am gone, they will have nothing.”

Only two other beggars work the gates of Tuol Sleng: a man with a missing forearm and another with a missing leg. Both refused to be interviewed.

Twelve kilometres to the south lies Choeung Ek, a former orchard and cemetery where the Khmer Rouge executed approximately 17,000 people before burying them in mass graves. Today, a small museum, numerous grassy pits, and a stupa filled with bones remind visitors of this tree-shaded site’s inglorious past.

Hang Doul, 60, has been begging at the Choeung Ek killing fields since 1988. He steadies himself on a homemade crutch; his right leg ends abruptly at the thigh. Hang Doul’s approach is quiet and polite: he extends his hat towards tourists and mumbles combinations of the few English words he knows: money, hello, please, rice, sir. If tourists decline, he does not persist. He never asks for money from Choeung Ek’s Cambodian visitors. “They tell me I’m just a beggar,” he says. “They only give me unkind words.”

In 1980, while fighting the Khmer Rouge near Kampot, Hang Doul lost most of his right leg to a landmine. His wounds were treated in Vietnam by the very communists he fought against in the early 1970s when stationed in Nha Trang, South Vietnam as a soldier in Lon Nol’s American-trained and -equipped army. “The Americans treated me well,” Hang Doul says. “We were all like friends.” Before enlisting, he had lived as a Buddhist monk.

When the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, Hang Doul hid his soldiering past for fear of violent reprisals against him and his family. Like so many others at the time, he was forced to work in the fields from dawn to dusk with little to eat.

Every day, in an amazing feat of balance, Hang Doul rides his bicycle to Choeung Ek where he is joined by fellow landmine amputee Chum Bun Choon. Whereas Chum Bun Choon – who lost a leg while fighting the Khmer Rouge in 1987 – still receives his monthly army salary of $25, Hang Doul receives nothing.

A day’s begging can net these men anywhere from $10 to $20 apiece, a small fortune in a country where 28.3% of the population lives off less than $1.25 a day. Both men have never made more money in their lives: before moving to Phnom Penh, Hang Doul struggled as a farmer in Takeo province, and until a year ago, Chum Bun Choon sold books and coins to tourists in Phnom Penh’s Russian Market.

Still, both men say that they live a hand-to-mouth existence. “Sometimes my children don’t have anything to eat,” Hang Doul says. “I can never make enough money.” Chum Bun Choon claims to be racked with debt ever since his eldest daughter’s wedding.

While Hang Doul dreams of saving enough money to buy a pair of cows, he considers this an idle fantasy: every last riel he makes goes towards feeding, clothing and educating his ten children. “When they are older,” he says, “they will support me. But for now, I must beg.” Chum Bun Choon, who supports his wife and eight children, also plans to continue begging into the foreseeable future. “I would like to do something new,” he says, “I like to learn. But I don’t have time. I have to take care of my family.”

When exiting Choeung Ek and Tuol Sleng, tourists likely create a cognitive association between the atrocities they have just witnessed and the living display of suffering begging before them. Compound this with a yearly increase of visitors to these sites, and Choeung Ek and Tuol Sleng become something of a beggars’ banquet. A consequence of this is that begging rights are jealously guarded.

For several years, Tuol Sleng’s beggars have formed a firm triumvirate: they allow absolutely no outsiders to beg within their territory. Local tuk tuk drivers say that other beggars attempting to work around the former prison are promptly turned away with threatening words. While a few elderly and disabled beggars can occasionally be spotted in nearby streets, none of them dare to beg within sight of the museum’s entrance.

Similarly, the begging at Choeung Ek is monopolised by its two landmine amputees. In their case, however, their territorial claims are not as calculated. While Choeung Ek’s security guards generally discourage begging at the site, Hang Doul and Chum Bun Choon’s presence is tolerated because they both live a short distance away.

In contrast to Tuol Sleng, other beggars attempting to work the gates of Choeung Ek are turned away by the site’s security. Such was the case when Chum Bun Choon first arrived last year. His perseverance, however, eventually eroded the guards’ (and Hang Doul’s) resistance.

With his lucrative occupation seemingly secured for the time being, Chum Bun Choon has settled into the life of a beggar. Like Tuol Sleng’s disfigured trio, he enjoys the advantages brought about by monopolisation – a situation that will persist until the beggars are strong-armed off their turf by either the authorities or a new generation of unfortunates.